


Ask to Receive

by theoldgods



Series: Part of Our Game [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Anal Fingering, Background Relationships, Casual Sex, Cunnilingus, Dom/sub Undertones, F/M, Friends With Benefits, Masturbation, Older Woman/Younger Man, Pegging, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Post-Season/Series 04, Vaginal Fingering, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-13
Updated: 2017-02-13
Packaged: 2018-09-23 22:55:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9685577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theoldgods/pseuds/theoldgods
Summary: When Mycroft's internal blue screen of death continues mostly unabated, Alicia nudges him, with words and dildo, toward professionally dealing with his control issues.Or, Lady Smallwood in the sitting room with the strap-on.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alocin42](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alocin42/gifts).



> Please see the endnotes for warnings of potential triggering content. Spoilers for season 4 within. This is part of a series, and follows on from the others accordingly, but should also mostly work as a standalone.
> 
> More than either of the other two works in this series, this owes a lot to Nicola (enigmaticpenguinofdeath on tumblr), who provided at least half the plot beats and who, with Lou (thediogenes), patiently Britpicked my eleventh-hour "oh shit, it's not called a couch in the UK, is it?"-type errors. Thank you both for being my porn sounding board. <3 As always, any remaining Americanisms in vocab are mine, and corrections on that point are welcome.
> 
> I reblog/have occasional tag meltdowns about Mycroft, among all sorts of other stuff, at [my tumblr](http://theoldgods.tumblr.com) if you're so interested!

****Her life was blissfully free of Holmeses for weeks; the closest she got was a ten-minute session with Mycroft’s assistant in a Chelsea bar’s loo, with the girl’s mouth put to far better uses than gossip. When she finally encountered Mycroft in Whitehall again, he spent most of their shared meeting alternately staring into the middle distance and looking at his phone.

Three days later, when she slid very nearly late into another meeting, the faintly bitter taste of Anthea still on her tongue, Mycroft looked at her, stiffened, and turned pink. She considered texting him ( _I apologize, but she is indeed skilled, and I shan’t borrow her again during business hours_ ) during a particularly dull presentation—she could do no worse than Edwin, who checked his phone every ten or so minutes to make another move in Words with Friends—but refrained, considering how close Mycroft was sitting to a few proper members of MI6. Instead she watched him get into an icy argument with Edwin about a white nationalist terror cell operating out of Moscow (his eyes were dull and red as he did so) and spill water onto his own lap (his lips pressed together until they disappeared).

She returned to the Diogenes Club the next afternoon to pass along a stack of queries from Herself’s office. Mycroft took them without looking at her. Anthea, she noted, was nowhere in sight.

“I hope you didn’t fire the poor girl,” she said, leaning against the back of the chair opposite Mycroft as he glanced down at his phone.

His shoulders went rigid. “I am not an ethics officer.”

“Too true.” She drummed fingertips against the chair; he flinched. “I shan’t borrow her again, if it bothers you.”

“Your business is your business, Lady Smallwood.”

“Yes, I rather think that might be your issue.”

Mycroft’s inhale was hoarse. “Anthea can do as she pleases. _My issue_ , as you so delicately put it, is my own behavior, not hers.”

She laughed. “I didn’t ask you to eat my cunt so you could come over all gallant about it afterward.”

“My lady—”

Her nose wrinkled. “ _Please_ , Mycroft.”

“ _Alicia_ , then.” His eyes flashed. Her pulse beat a warning against her wrist; though Mycroft was famed for his imperial indolence, she knew far too much of the MI6 selection process and Mycroft’s early career to discount his anger. “I do not mean to insult you. I do not intend to treat you like my mother’s best Wedgwood.”

“But, like any well-bred gentleman, you’ll bravely soldier on and do so anyway.”

There was more than a touch of bile to her voice, she knew. Mycroft’s breathing slowed as he looked her up and down, no doubt deducing every last thing she’d done in the past twenty-four hours.

“Strictly speaking, I do not come from a gentlemanly family.”

“Strictly speaking, your Uncle Rudolph Vernet was also a minor civil servant in Her Majesty’s Government, a precocious nobody pulled from nothing.” She pressed a palm against her knee, suppressing her smile. “If you have something to say, say it and let me return to work.”

“My issues do not belong on your platter. I seem to be set on a path to destroy our personal and professional relationship. It isn’t fair to you.” When she opened her mouth to argue, he barrelled on. “It isn’t fair to me or to my _work_. I cannot be trusted to blur my work and personal lives any further.”

“I wasn’t aware they were ever separate to begin with.”

His grin was tired. “That’s as may be. But lately they’re all of one particularly large and disgusting morass. Between our impending free fall into political absurdity and my siblings’ cavorting, this is no time for me to be falling apart.” He took a shuddering breath. “You are the best I have ever had at breaking me into pieces.”

“Better than Miss Adler?” She bit down a laugh at the dilation of his pupils. “I'm charmed. But you know how to put yourself back together. It hasn't changed in the past months, regardless of your soap-opera family.”

Mycroft’s fingers twitched. “One of my sins answers only to music, at the moment. The other I see shooting himself in the head whenever I close my eyes. I cannot speak to anyone with them in the back of my head, and I cannot get them out of my mind.”

“They’ve always been there, Mycroft. They always will be.” Her voice was softer probably than he wanted to hear, but most nights she saw Woody’s stiff hand curled on top of his hunting rifle along the undersides of her own eyelids. “Now you can’t avoid dealing with them any longer.”

“I don’t want to escape them.” His lips barely moved as he spoke. “I know you’re...not supposed to do that, usually.”

“Good boy.”

He closed his eyes, lifted his chin, faintly parted his lips. Her lower abdomen swooped.

“Talking is not escaping.” The back of her throat burned; she cleared it, ignoring the itch at the corner of one of her eyes. “Talking is negotiating with the past. Coming to terms with our sins.”

“You did not invite Magnussen into your life.” His voice had gone soft. “You did not ask for this.”

She sneered. “Yes, I did. For the security of the nation, I did. Just as you chose to keep your mad sister locked up like an animal. We did what had to be done. We paid the price. My husband was a dear friend in life, but in death he is mine as he never was when he was alive.”

Mycroft opened his eyes, slowly, though he did not move his head. “And so you’d tell me that I must offer them love while they are still alive to receive it.”

“I think you’ve always loved them, don’t you?” When he did not reply, she continued, “I’d tell you that you must learn to let them go.”

He sighed. “Yes, I suppose a dominatrix _would_ say that.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Miss Adler would be ashamed to hear you call me that.”

“I meant no offense to actual sex workers.” His eyes danced—briefly, though she caught it and smiled nonetheless.

“Don’t listen to me, Mycroft. Listen to a professional. If you’re serious about wanting to stop falling apart, sort out the control issues seeping out of your pores and poisoning us all.”

“Is that a proposition?”

She straightened, brushing faint wrinkles from her skirt. “If you want it to be.”

“I believe I told you once before that I cannot trust just anybody to watch me fall apart.” He scratched his neck with a shivering hand. “I’ve tried some old friends in the past weeks, but none of them are quite—I can’t ask them to do _this_.”

Something was tickling around the edges of her clit; she buried her hands against her waist to stop herself from being tempted. “And what, pray tell, is _this_ you want from me?”

“Please,” he whispered, between white lips. “Take me apart. Smash me to bits, take control.”

Her head was buzzing with arousal now, as was her cunt. She let him see how she squeezed her thighs more closely together, ran a hand down her stocking.

“If you want a cock up your arse, darling, why don’t you ask me for it?”

He swallowed, and when he spoke his voice was thin.

“Please bugger me senseless.”

She brushed her clit through her skirt and knickers, one quick stroke as he clenched his hands together atop his desk, before adjusting her blouse and heading for the door.

“If you come around mine tomorrow evening, after nine, I should be finished for the night and ready to deal with various personal emergencies.”

His exhale was harsh as she left.

* * *

She was both tired and aroused when she answered the doorbell in stocking feet the next evening. On the doorstep Mycroft was wrapped in navy wool and silk, and he hung his coat and scarf up with the requisite care as she poured Talisker and left it on the sideboard before collapsing on her sitting room sofa.

“Bedtime?” he asked, collecting his portion and taking a sip.

“Just run ragged by this country’s collection of spooks, as per usual.” Her own glass was perched precariously on the arm of the sofa, centimeters from her shoulder, and Mycroft kept glancing at it as he took another sip. “At least you’re a sight for sore eyes.”

He was in trousers, shirt, and waistcoat, his neck bare and tieless, his sleeves preemptively rolled to his elbows. As she watched, he stroked the rim of his glass, his fingers steady and smooth in their circles.

“I aim to serve, my lady.”

She took a long draught of her scotch and moved the tumbler to the end table, sinking deeper into the cushions and widening her legs. “Would you please.”

Not a question, and he moved almost automatically as she said it, in any case, knocking back most of his remaining whisky before sinking onto his knees before her. His left hand enveloped her ankle as his right reached up to the top of her stocking before halting.

“I didn’t see any need for underthings after I got home,” she admitted, hooking a foot around his flank to hold him in place. His hand brushed her curls, barely noticeable, a finger swirling down to her clit, and he bit his lip. “Of any kind.”

Her blouse was cool and soft against her breasts. He slid his hand from her cunt to her chest almost reverently, shivering as he moved under the fabric to brush a thumb across one nipple.

“Christ.”

“Indeed.” She leaned her head back across the top of the sofa, spreading her arms wide. “At your leisure.”

His mouth was feverish against her breasts, one hand against her waist for balance as he pushed her skirt up to her waist with the other. He was, of course, blissfully at ease with multitasking, sucking lightly either side of each nipple, back and forth, as he tickled the skin around the tops of her stockings. By the time he slid a finger into her, she was already wet and clenching around nothing.

“Bless you,” she murmured, as his lips trailed down her stomach and paused where her skirt met her blouse. When he remained curious about the joining of fabric, she linked the fingers of one hand into his hair and steered his mouth further south. He slid his head between her thighs, draping her legs over his shoulders with a minimum of fuss as she held his face to her.

His kiss against her entrance was slow, his tongue almost soft against her folds. His breath tingled with alcohol, tickling skin and hair alike as his hands massaged her thighs. She watched them move from beneath half-lidded eyes as his mouth gathered rhythm and speed and her hips jolted.

“God, you’re a thing of beauty.” Her voice was already thick with desire; she could feel it echoing in her chest and stomach. “I’m beginning to think the sight of your hair between my thighs might be the best part of today.”

His tongue darted inside her, and she muffled a cry against her arm. He fucked her with proficient flicks, wet and hot against and in her, his nose sliding nearly perfectly against her clit, and she could feel herself press into his face, her pulse beating ever faster low in her abdomen.

“Only today?”

His voice rumbled in her; her legs clenched tightly around his shoulders and neck. She twisted her hand down to the roots of his hair and pulled, rather harder than was strictly necessary.

“I _have_ had much prettier hair there. I—”

His tongue ran from her entrance to her clit and back again, and her voice disappeared in a moan that pinged inside her own skull as the edges of the world blurred. When she, gasping, could open her eyes again, Mycroft was watching the motion of her breasts beneath her blouse as he crooked two fingers into her. She pressed a hand against his slippery, swollen mouth and chin and dug her nails into his skin until she came again, her thigh muscles spasming against his shoulders and her own arm.

Mycroft sank back on his heels and nuzzled the edge of her thumb as she slid her legs free of him, sat up, and reached for her tumbler. She sipped while stroking his cheek and hairline, and when she eventually pulled her hand free and brought it up to her own mouth, he made a sound perilously close to a whimper.

“Oh, is that so?”

She slid the thumb still damp with his saliva into her mouth, tasting nothing so much as skin and a faint, vaguely sour musk. Mycroft closed his eyes and groaned.

“Still thirsty, darling?”

His lips moved, though no sound emerged. She reached down to his trousers, where his cock was only beginning to stir, still mostly soft against her fingers; he leaned into her touch until she pulled away, watching him bite the edge of his lip to stop from making any further involuntary noise.

“When was the last time, Mycroft?”

He opened one eye. “The last time I submitted to buggery?”

“If that’s what gentlemen of a certain age are calling it now.”

“Last week.” When she raised an eyebrow, he stifled his smile against the back of one hand. “My dear young friend has a talented tongue and a cock I could sit on for hours, were he not so drunk on testosterone that ten minutes is a test of his patience. He has no ability to...command.”

“So you remain as tightly wound as ever.”

He swallowed. “If you like.”

“The question,” she said, pulling her feet under her as Mycroft blinked and looked up, “is if that’s what _you_ would like.”

“If you no longer wish—”

“To see you writhing at the end of my cock would be my genuine pleasure.” She drained the last of her scotch and placed the empty tumbler back on the end table. Its heat burned a slow path down her throat to her stomach. “I would fuck you right here on this sofa, in fact, if you don’t mind; the bedrooms are all rather a mess tonight. But you know my rules, Mycroft, such as they are: ask to receive.”

For a moment he was still, and then he began to remove his waistcoat, his fingers deft against button after button. She watched him slide out of it entirely and fold it next to her glass, then loosen his braces and add them to the pile. His forearms gleamed in the lamplight as he undid the laces of his shoes, fingers flexing against leather and the black silk of his socks. By the time he was barefoot and kneeling again alongside her, a strand of hair falling across his pale forehead, her cunt was twinging once more.

“I have not been pegged for years.” He pressed one palm against the armrest while the fingers of his other hand dug into the carpet. “Please—Alicia, please fuck me.”

She could feel herself smiling as she shifted position. “Everything we need should be in the second drawer of the coffee table. Start preparing yourself. If you don’t mind, I’d rather like to watch for a minute first.”

He stood with his fingers twisted into the band of his trousers for a long moment, looking back and forth between her and the coffee table. When he eventually unzipped, the sound was loud in the silence around them, and he shucked off both trousers and pants in one long motion before folding them atop the coffee table. His cock was half-hard, rosy against the nearly milk tones of his thighs and stomach as he unbuttoned his shirt. He moved toward the drawer slowly, allowing her eyes to follow the turn of his arse under the hem of his shirt.

From within the drawer he removed a bottle of lube, a condom packet, and, after a moment’s hesitation, the harness and dildo, before looking back at her.

She stretched across the sofa, flexing her ankles, and slid one hand under her skirt. Her fingers began idly stroking her clit as he approached her, knelt on the floor, and took his cock in hand.

“Lovely boy.”

Mycroft’s hands moved achingly slowly up and down his prick, twisting at the head. He spoke as if in a dream.

“Is the condom for you or for me?”

“Unlike yours, my cock does not make any sort of mess, pet.”

His mouth twisted as he opened the packet and slid it on. She followed the movements of his fingers with close care, stroking her own more quickly against herself and allowing her mouth to fall slightly open. When he upended the bottle of lube into his palm, she slid a finger into herself properly, clenching in on it.

“You’d best work up to it now,” she whispered as her hips jerked. “I will not let you touch yourself once I’m in you.”

He slid a lubed finger toward his arse as his other hand squeezed the base of his cock. “Or, what, precisely?”

Her lower back protested as she forced herself into a sitting position and removed her fingers from her cunt. “Or we have a pleasant discussion on the budget for the upcoming fiscal year until your driver returns for you.”

Mycroft winced and ran his finger around his exposed rim. “You’d punish yourself to punish me?”

“ _I’ve_ already come twice this evening.” She leaned forward, feeling the liquid heat of alcohol and arousal in her stomach slosh down to her cunt. “And I’ve plenty of people willing to take my cock. You, darling, seem rather short of acceptable shagging partners at the moment, to hear you whinge about it.”

Mycroft’s finger slide inside himself; his mouth opened, releasing an aborted groan. “We can’t all be as wanton as y—oh, Christ.”

His cock was hot under the latex, surging within her grip. She squeezed the head, watching his mouth open further to reveal the reddish pink of his tongue.

“You were saying?”

He moaned as she slid a hand to join his around his balls. She traced the edge of his sack, watching the tightening of his face, the slow shudder of his cheekbones under the rosy tint of his skin. When she removed her hands, he moaned again.

“One single finger, and you’re really gasping for it?” She lifted the harness from the floor next to him, readjusting the fit around the dildo. He slid a second finger into his arse, mouth widening yet further. “Pretty.”

She stepped out of her skirt and into the harness as he whimpered. By the time she slid onto the sofa again and began spreading lube along her silicone length, he had his face pressed into the fabric by her feet as his fingers worked his arse.

“Does your testosterone-drugged friend have a pretty cock, Mycroft?”

He mumbled something into the furniture. She slid her dry hand into his hair and pulled until his eyes met hers. He swallowed.

“Thick enough.”

She released her cock, rubbing wet fingers against his cheek to mingle lube with sweat. His tongue darted out to meet her, and she let him taste for a moment before pulling away.

“I could lock you in my office and keep you on display, just like this. Maybe keep your tongue out for any visitors to use as they will, as I rather think that’s going to be your shining achievement in life, eating cunt.”

His voice was slightly strangled as, still wanking both cock and arse, he replied. “I suck cock well, too.”

“Ah, of course you do, extraordinarily capable as Her Majesty claims you are.” She perched on the edge of the sofa. “Please feel free to indulge yourself.”

She had seen Mycroft eat her three times now, the quick strokes of his head between her legs, the skillful use of the entire lower half of his face. She had not seen him take a long stick of silicone halfway down his throat in one smooth motion, his eyes closing in near-relaxation as he did so, exhaling tightly through his nose. Before she could in any way move, he was backing up for a proper breath before spearing himself on it again, this time pushing his nose nearly to the dildo’s base.

She ran a finger down his jawline, feeling his muscles tremble beneath her touch, and to his throat, where she could feel the outline of the cock against his skin as he swallowed.

“A very pretty party trick,” she murmured, slowly pulling out until his mouth was again free, attached to the cock by the thinnest strand of saliva that he reached up to wipe away. “Does MI6 teach you that?”

“Inborn, like all my capabilities.” His smile was distracted and wistful, the hand not in his arse brushing against her bare knee. “They did not complain.”

“And nor shall I.” She nodded at the cushion next to her. “Up you get, Mr. Holmes.”

His cock, fully hard against the white panels of the unbuttoned shirt he still wore, jumped against his stomach as he obeyed. He slid onto his knees, arse near her lap, his forearms against the far armrest. He moaned as she ran a hand along one cheek, pressing her slick thumb against his half-opened entrance.

“I do miss this, when you’re buried between my thighs.” She squeezed, rolling a pinch of flesh between three fingers as he twitched. “I prefer wider-set hips, when all is said and done, but something this taut—” she slid her thumb past the ring of muscle, smiling as he inhaled “—is nothing to laugh at.”

“I’m—adequate—?”

“Oh, quite.” She laughed as he pushed back against her, taking her thumb in to the knuckle. “As long as you’ll say the same for me.”

His fingers were digging into the sofa. “Small sample size. But you’ve—best thighs.”

“Well, thank you, Mycroft.” She slid the index finger of her other hand in alongside her thumb and listened to him moan and exhale. “That’s kind of you.”

She kept the thumb inside him, feeling the heat of his arse and the pull of muscle against her skin, as she gripped the cock with her other hand and positioned herself behind him, its tip brushing his arse. She held it there, stroking back and forth from one cheek to the other as her thumb slipped free.

“Would you—” Mycroft’s voice devolved into a whine as she slid a centimeter of cock in, only to remove it a moment later. “Oh, God.”

“Didn’t know you acknowledged him,” she said, curling one hand under his arse to stroke his balls. His hips bucked briefly into her touch. “He’s certainly not in the room now.”

His response was an articulate growl that dropped into another bout of whining when she slid back inside and held steady, two centimeters deep. When she did not move, his hand flexed.

“Do not.” She gripped the base of his cock; he inhaled sharply. “This is mine, as agreed. Keep your hands on the sofa.”

He pressed his head between his hands, scraping his nose against the fabric, as she squeezed, the lightest prick of nail. When his body went still, she pressed in another two or so centimeters.

“Good boy.”

She pulled out, then slid in, halfway up the cock in one stroke. He gasped, his prick jerking tightly against his abdomen.

“Better?”

“Please.”

She tightened her grip on his balls.

“Please, yes, it’s good, please—”

The next stroke was just as deep—fully out, then three-quarters of the way in, his cock twitching under the invasion, his breath exhaled against her sitting room furniture. Before he could fully react, she thrust a second time, a third, tickling from his balls back to his entrance, then a fourth, sliding her fingers to the sheathed head of his cock and tweaking through the condom.

“Christ, please.”

She removed her hands from him entirely.

“Please, no, I’ll—”

She slid halfway out and then fully in, the base of the dildo sliding between his cheeks as he muffled a yell against his arm. Her rhythm became alternated shallow and deep strokes, her hands on his hips for counterbalance as she moved in earnest, the harness and dildo pressing faintly against her clit on particularly vigorous thrusts. Heat was spreading across her lower abdomen and down into her cunt with each stroke and answering grunt from him, each whispered or moaned “please,” a faint litany under the sounds of skin against skin and skin against fabric.

After a few minutes of this, one of his hands lifted again. She let him get one clumsy brush of his cock before pulling out of him entirely and batting his hand away.

“And you were doing so well.”

“I’m sorry,” he told the sofa, his voice breaking. “I’m sorry, I just—I wanted—”

“You’re _lazy_ , darling.” She brushed the cockhead against his entrance to listen to his bitten-off whine. “You’re too lazy to have the slightest bit of discipline, wanting it and grabbing at it, just like your miserable grubby brother, aren’t you?”

“No,” he whispered, as she slid properly back inside. “I’m sorry, I didn’t, I only want _this_ , I swear.”

“This?”

Mycroft pushed back to take the dildo in nearly to its hilt again. “Your cock. Please. That’s all I—that’s all I want.”

She pressed a fingertip into his perineum as her hips gathered rhythm again, in and out, almost languid against his arse. “Is it, now?”

His voice made a strangled sound, a choked, wet gasp. “Harder.”

She kept the slow pace, brushing his balls and cock. His hips twisted under her, his fingers scrabbling against fabric.

“Please.”

Two fast strokes, very nearly slamming her hips crudely against his arse, his exhale a delighted, wobbling moan, and then slower again, until she could feel her thigh muscles ripple with the strain of holding back momentum. One hard stroke, her fingers bruising his hip, three slow, one hard, two slow, sliding her grip down to his cock, which twitched against her as he croaked her name.

Five hard, quick thrusts, her hand cupping his balls, her thighs screaming, his gasps and moans ringing in her ears, before she pulled out altogether, wiping the sweat off her hands against the nearest cushion.

He sobbed—soft, muffled against his own taut forearm, but audible in the silence that hung around them. She smiled as she readjusted one of the straps of the harness.

“Needy thing.” She slid her thumb against his entrance, listening to him sob a second time, his voice fraying further. “Posh boy likes a bit of rough?”

He lifted his head for a moment, and she saw a splotch on his arm where he’d bitten down in an attempt to silence himself. His eyes were liquid gray and peculiarly shiny. When he lowered his forehead and dipped his spine, forcing his arse back against her, she wrapped a hand around the back of his neck and held it there, feeling the goose pimples ripple outward from her touch.

“Alicia.”

She slid back into him, fully seated, hips against his arse, one hand on his balls as the other pressed his head into the armrest. Her thrusts were fast and hard, her nails digging into his neck, her hand moving to strip his cock in time with the pulse of her hips. Mycroft took shuddering, sobbing breaths for the long minutes it took until, with a final strangled cry, he came on a particularly vicious stroke, filling the condom as she released his neck.

When the spurts stopped, she pulled out of him. He remained on hands and knees, sagged in around himself, breathing hard as she unbuckled the harness and tossed it and the dildo to the floor. He was still motionless while she slid two fingers into her cunt and stroked, brutally, thumb bruising her clit until a shock ran down her legs.

“Christ.”

Sweat dripped between her breasts, clinging to her blouse. She fanned the fabric against her chest as Mycroft sat up, face red and eyes redder, his forearms mottled with half-faded bite impressions and one especially sharp weal.

“I didn’t break the skin,” he said, following the path of her gaze. His voice was dreamlike, sliding loosely in his mouth. “Maybe that means I wasn’t fucked hard enough.”

She brushed the nape of his neck, wiping away sweat and straightening the hair there. His body still vibrated faintly beneath her fingers.

“Did it hurt?”

“Blissfully.” He cleared his throat, and when he continued, it was in a more solid tone. “The world was white and calm for thirty seconds.” He slid the condom off himself deftly, if slowly, and she looked away as he tied its end off and, with a memory from some long-ago cocktail party he must have attended here, went to the loo to dispose of it. When he returned, his face was paler again and his eyes clear.

She put back on her skirt and rolled her empty tumbler between her hands as he stepped into his pants and trousers. He took the glass from her with gentle hands, as well as his own, and placed them on the sideboard as she stretched out on the sofa to watch him finish straightening.

“Everything coming back online?” she asked as he tied his shoes. Her vision was beginning to blur contentedly at the edges.

“Regretfully.” His smile was nonetheless calm as he disappeared into the hallway for his coat, though he returned to watch her as he wrapped his scarf around his neck. “I suspect you’ll be glad to know that I spent the ride here making an appointment with a therapist who has suspiciously long and convenient hours.”

She flexed her ankles, turning her head to rest more comfortably against a pillow. “Strictly speaking, she doesn’t have any security clearance, though I think at this point she might as well.”

“But you do.”

“With a few fits and starts, yes.”

In his overcoat and scarf, navy blue and imperial, he was again the stern spectre of Whitehall, but for his luminous, translucent eyes.

“You will forgive me if from time to time that is a comfort to me.”

She raised an eyebrow. “And you’ll forgive me if I cannot let our relationship go, regardless of how many people it takes to straighten out your life again.”

His smile was both momentary and beautiful.

**Author's Note:**

> This contains brief references to canonical suicide/suicide attempts, Mycroft absentmindedly mildly self-harming in sex, and a moment of consensual, if probably undernegotiated, roughness.


End file.
